


Back to Back We Face Ourselves

by rin0rourke



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Draco Malfoy & Ron Weasley Friendship, Explicit Language, F/M, M/M, Ron Weasley is a Good Friend, Slytherin Harry Potter, Slytherin Ron Weasley, Time Travel Fix-It, bossy big brother ron
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-07-25 14:03:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16199003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rin0rourke/pseuds/rin0rourke
Summary: Draco Malfoy's dying wish, or command really, had Ron traveling back in time to their first year at Hogwarts to rewrite their history and save lives. If he knew what Ron planned to change, however, Draco probably would have died with his secrets clamped behind his teeth.





	Back to Back We Face Ourselves

**Author's Note:**

> A trope prompt, Drarry Time-Travel, that maybe kind of got away from me. I'm not deep in this fandom, so I apologize for any factual casualties in the canon or continuity, I'm just having fun with this.
> 
>  
> 
> Will not be a full chapter by chapter fic, will time jump a lot. I have zero intentions of rewriting the entire series.

“Bloody hell Malfoy.”

It was one hell of a mess, Ron had thought himself prepared, he’d seen the evidence when he had first walked the crime scene with his father to collect the illegally modified muggle equipment, but there was a very big difference between dry black bloodstains and an actively growing pool beneath a still living body.

Draco cracked open his eyes and stared at him, something like confusion in his pain clouded gaze. He was dressed so normal, Ron couldn’t help but be unnerved by it as he dropped to his knees and got to work. He hadn’t actually seen the body, even when Harry had firecalled him asking him to, ‘to be sure’. He had already been halfway through the journal at that point. He hadn’t the stomach to pay a visit.

He had to rip the plain white shirt, saying “Why couldn’t you have worn one of those stupid button-up ones you always liked,” as he set to trying to stay the blood flow. It wasn’t natural, a white shirt and trousers, scuffed steel-toe boots, a muggle billfold had been among his personal effects for merlin’s sake. He’d almost pulled a Harry and assumed Malfoy had faked the whole thing.

If not for the journal…

“How did you-” Malfoy tried before the pain of speaking seized him, causing his body to bow up off the ground and wreck the hasty first aid Ron had managed, ripping open the new skin that was trying to knit the wounds together.

“How do you think?” Ron snapped, putting more force than he really needed to in shoving the other back down and keeping him there as he worked. “Stay still you bastard, its hard enough keeping you alive without you thrashing.”

It wasn’t exactly a fair thing to say, Ron had his own experience with a splinching and he knew the victim couldn’t really control how the body reacted to that much trauma, but he wasn’t really feeling gracious bedside manner at the moment.

He was already running on his only reserves of charity for the git.

“Why is it not healing?” He growled and keeping his weight on one forearm, both to keep Malfoy still as to keep pressure on the wounds, grabbed another bottle of dittany from the bag he’d brought with him, uncorking it with his mouth and applying it across the huge open gashes.

“Its not-nngh-,” Malfoy clenched his teeth against a wave of agony. “It’s a curse.”

“Curse?” Ron stared at him, eyes huge.

“Frrr-from before.”

Before, before what? “You didn’t get splinched because of some time-travel experiment?” Draco carefully, barely, shook his head. “Bloody- well that’s brilliant isn’t it?” He tossed the now empty bottle away and struggled through the rest of his rudimentary first aid knowledge from Auror training. “Lets hope this keeps you alive long enough then, they’ll sort you out at St. Mugo’s.”

“No,” The denial came like a gust from Draco and he grabbed Ron’s shoulder, bloodshot eyes wild, “No.”

“Merlin Malfoy, do you think I’ve the skills to do this myself?” Ron gagged as the freshly healed parts of the wounds started to peel apart in front of his very eyes. “This is so far beyond anything I can handle.”

“Go.” Malfoy’s voice was bubbling, and there was blood on his lips now.

“I didn’t break the bloody law to travel back just to not save your pasty ass you-” Malfoy cut him off by putting a blood coated hand on his cheek and forcibly turning his head to the side, towards the array of muggle items in the corner of the shack.

“Go back.” Malfoy said simply, “Go back further.”

Then he died.

Ron stared down at him, at the vacant blue eyes and the slack face, and swore. Fuck you Malfoy.” He said bitterly, because that was really all he could say. He’d thought, he had really thought, but it hadn’t made a difference after all.

He’d gone back in time, used Malfoy’s secret time turner and gone back to save him, because what else was he supposed to do after reading that damn… what had Malfoy thought he’d accomplish anyway? Messing with time travel? His stupid plans to change everything, to fix everything, wasn’t it enough that they had won the war? Malfoy hadn’t even really lost anyone important. His parents were still alive, none of them had gone to Azkaban, he’d even seemed to have been getting somewhere with this mental auto repair shop he’d set up.

So why did he have a journal filled with plans to change things?

Plans to save THEM.

Ron stood on shaky legs, not quite ready to let go of his anger. Not quite ready to let go at all. Death wasn’t new to him, but it really wasn’t anything he was comfortable with.

“Why couldn’t you have just left well enough be you ass.” He snarled down at the corpse.

Go back further…

He’d already gone back farther than anyone was supposed to, that damn time turner he’d stolen from Hermione’s desk.

“Damn it Malfoy.” He kicked out at Draco’s leg, but there was no reaction. There wouldn’t be, not ever again.

He was running out of time, the five minute countdown was sure to be running low, and then he’d be back in his own time and having to face his wife and eventually Harry when he came back from Ginny’s tournament. Tell them he broke the law and risked getting fired, or Azkaban, to save the ferret.

Because of a sodding diary.

Ron glared at the offending item where it lay, still open and ready for its next update on Malfoy’s desk. Detailing the date of his latest time-travel experiment, the one that would cost him his life.

He wandered to it, flipping the pages back to the passage that made his decision for him, though the whole rotten thing had been one guilt trip after another.

‘ _I considered going back to the Battle, to attempt another small change, but have determined the risks to be too great for an outcome that would likely be altered once I make my final jump. I have made alterations to my yearly plans to factor in the risks involved in attempting to change this during that time however, though how it will play out with my previous years of interferences I cannot predict, I can only plan ahead so much, however I do have every intention of preventing a war to begin with, so the fate of the Weasley twin should not be in such jeopardy._

_‘I simply cannot endure seeing only the one of them, not when I am certain I can make these changes if I chose.’_

Final jump. It wasn’t the first or last time Malfoy had mentioned that, which had never sat well with him knowing the five minute limit on the Time Turner. Before the Ministry had assumed the two were planning on saving Voldemort, but the investigation hadn’t found evidence of that. Hermione had theorized that Malfoy and Nott had intended to make many small changes, and that the final jump would simply be their last, Ron hadn’t really agreed.

Because of this, this one entry.

Why would Malfoy make any small changes at all if he intended to completely stop the war? No, someone wanting to win a war wouldn’t plot to save enemies on the other side.

There was something else going on.

If only they had arrested Nott when Malfoy was still alive, instead of tracking their ties and finding the poor bastard’s corpse months old in this… muggle auto shop.

Ron flipped the journal closed and stalked towards the muggle machinery, the same old beat up car he had last seen as a teen. How Malfoy had recovered his parent’s flying car he’d never know, but that the thing was gutted and sitting in a corner under a tarp had hurt. It had saved his life, his and Harry’s, and Malfoy had been picking it apart like a scavenger bird.

Except, looking at it now he didn’t really see that.

The doors had been replaced, and all the shattered windows too, the bonnet was removed, but there was a new one in the corner, unpainted, ready to be put in place.

Draco had been fixing it.

Ron ran his hand along the side, feeling all the little imperfections where the dents had been popped back out and sanded down. The journal had spoken about Malfoy’s ‘project car’, he just hadn’t connected it to the battered vehicle his father and he had shaken their heads over as they gathered evidence.

Well, he’d have to see about giving it a home, when he got back. It was the least he could do, seeing as how he couldn’t save the prat himself.

 He smiled and gave the car a light pat, then looked back at Draco, who was still dead. He knew the seconds were ticking down, he’d be pulled back soon, so why not indulge a little? It wasn’t like Draco could say anything. He opened the car door and slid into the seat, Merlin, but he had wanted his own car for AGES. Hermione of course, being a muggle born, had dismissed the idea as a frivolous expense, muggles used cars out of necessity, wizards could floo or apperate.

Well, no offense to he wife, but she had never been splinched, and this particular car had saved his life on two, TWO occasions. It felt so solid around him, he grinned as he gripped the steering wheel, so safe.

Until it suddenly turned on.

He felt the pull, not unlike apperating, and knew the time turner was bringing him back, but the car roared to life at the same instant, the door slammed shut and the dials on the dash flinched, jumping up then stabilizing. He could feel the time turner pulling him and he understood why Malfoy had referred to them as ‘jumps’, only instead of the feel of moving forward he could swear it was like sinking. Like the moment he leaned too far back in a chair and it tipped. He gripped the wheel of the car tighter and screwed his eyes shut. “Bloody-“

“-Hell Malfoy” his mouth finished the words, and he blinked, staring down at the corpse in the room.

Only it wasn’t a corpse, and it was staring back. Draco Malfoy, laying exactly where he had left him, with a growing pool of blood and squinted open raw red eyes. Ron gaped, looking down at the time turner, which was indeed still running, then over to the car, still sitting quiet and ruined without wheels or a bonnet.

“Weas-“ Draco began, then shuddered, his body seizing against pain.

“Shit shit shit, don’t talk.” Ron hit his knees beside him and opened his bag for the vials of dittany, but even as he uncorked it and reached for Draco’s shirt he knew he was too late. Malfoy coughed, once, and then breathed no more. “No, Malfoy don’t you-” Ron spread the vial over the lacerations, but no new skin grew. “Fuck.” Ron fisted his hands in the bloodstained shirt and shook him, “Malfoy come ON!”

He hadn’t died that fast the first time. He’d lived long enough to at least tell him to…

“Go back.”

Turning again towards the car, the car that Draco had pointed to with the last of his strength, that Ron had sat inside of as the Time-turner had attempted to pull him forward, but had instead sent him back. Back to when he had first used it, five minutes into the past.

Ron surged up and rushed to it, grabbing for the handle too fast it slipped out of his bloody fingers causing him to struggle with opening it for precious seconds.

He had to stop, bracing his hands on the side of the car and bowing his head, just breathing. He was breathing too hard, too fast. Why was this upsetting him so much? It hadn’t the first time.

Because he hadn’t really realized it would be the first time. To him it was the last time. The only time. His only chance to save Malfoy, and when it had failed… he’d been frustrated and angry but he had expected it.

He wasn’t upset at Malfoy. He was upset because he was back here, again, when he should have been home, and the person who could tell him why had died too fast to help him. Why had he died so fast?

Ron stared back at the corpse, at the pool of blood and the one opened vial of dittany that had been as useless this time as before- the DITTANY. It had WORKED. Or at least, it had to have delayed Malfoy’s fate somewhat. Maybe if he was faster, if he could keep Malfoy from straining his injuries and used both bottles as fast as possible.

Merlin, where was his wife when he needed her?

“Leave it to you, ferret. Of course you’d never accept a time limit.”

Wiping his hands on his trousers he carefully opened the door and slid inside, he could do this, he could go back again and save Malfoy, and then he could go forward, and live the rest of his life with Draco Malfoy in his debt, because if the Ministry had been upset enough to confiscate the modified muggle objects they’d found the first time they would implode over this. A time turner car. Blimey they’d throw him in Azkaban for certain.

Ron held the little device in his hands, oh wow his hands were really really red, he had blood all over him how had he not even noticed? He giggled, knew he was hysterical, and tried to focus, tried to calm down. He leaned back, gripping the wheel in one hand and the time turner in the other, closed his eyes, and just breathed. He wouldn’t be any help like this, but he had time, he was sure he had time, he had watched Draco die and then wandered the shop the last time.

He just needed to wait, five minutes wasn’t so long, then he could go back and save Malfoy. Or at least buy him the time to call someone to save him. If he could keep Malfoy alive long enough for someone to arrive.

Breathe in, Breathe Out.

Five minutes.

The car revved its engine.

He jerked forward, there was no way that had been five minutes already, and opened his eyes. He stumbled against a desk, knocking his thigh into the corner and hissing a swear.

He was… he was in his office. The one he shared with Harry.

When was he? Had he returned to his own time? After all that had he really jumped forward?

“Ron?”

“What?” he glanced down, and realized he there was a firecall, shit shit, what?

“I asked if you were sure it as okay? I know you wanted to go too.”

Ron rubbed his eyes, it was Harry’s voice. Harry was firecalling him, and he didn’t sound upset or stressed or impatient for answers as he had been the last few calls after they had found Malfoy’s dead body.

“Yeah, its fine,” he said distractedly, glad he was out of view of the fireplace, “just bumped into the desk.” He tried to be casual as he searched the office for an answer to just where he had ended up, eyes alighting on the files spread about.

Oh.

That wasn’t good.

“If you’re sure.”

“Someone has to help Mione with Nott, and since I married her guess that’ll be me.” He said, not really remembering if that’s what he had said before. He stared down at the open file, the arrest report of one Theodore Nott, who had been found acting erratic, aggressive, and showing signs of being obliviated. With a Time Turner on his person. Harry laughed, and Ron came around his desk to crouch down by the fireplace, folder in hand and strained smile on his face. He knew what day it was now, and what time, and he didn’t have the luxury of a chat. “You take your girl, mate, I’ll handle mine.”

“Alright then Ron, good luck.”

“You too mate, have fun.”

As soon as Harry’s face disappeared in the embers Ron was throwing open their cabinet and stuffing their first aid supplies into his bag, how long had it been? What time was Draco’s experiment? Ron had only been able to roughly estimate its failure based on the estimated time of death, was he dying now? While Ron had stood here chatting with Harry, had he died?

He snapped his bag closed and concentrated, as he had done every time he had returned to the crime scene to study Draco’s place of work, to try to get inside the head of the man the journal told him was so very different from the boy he had grown up with.

He apparated into the auto shop at the exact moment Draco collapsed to the ground, and caught him before he hit.

“Weas-”

“Don’t talk,” Ron ordered, laying Malfoy out and fisting his shirt, tearing it open to expose the wounds. “Don’t talk, don’t move, just concentrate on staying alive Malfoy and you just might do that.”

Draco gasped, mouth working like a fish, but the pain already stole his voice. Ron could see it now, the slow clean parting of the flesh, like some invisible knife was opening him up. Ron uncorked the first of the handful of dittany vials he’d swiped from the cabinet and began pouring it as the wounds opened, racing the lines, trying to anticipate based on his last two jumps where they would open.

“What-” Draco’s throat worked as a slice opened up his neck and across his jaw, “is that?”

“Dittany,” Ron said, uncorking the next vial and reapplying it as the first slice reopened, “I carry it since I got splinched, it worked last time, so I grabbed more.”

“Last-?” Draco’s eyes crawled down to his chest where the time turner swung on its chain, “How did you?!” He surged up, grabbing at the device and pulling it hard, and Ron along with in.

“Hey!” Ron gripped Draco’s hand in his own, barely managing to keep from being strangled by the chain.

“The prototype was destroyed.” Malfoy managed, “Nott-“

“We arrested Nott,” Ron explained, “He was obliviated, and had this on him.” Ron pried Draco’s weakening fingers off the device and swung it around to his back as he worked, focusing again on the injuries that just kept reopening. “You need St. Mugo’s, I should have owled them before I came, I don’t think I can side along you and keep you alive at the same time.”

“They can’t help me.” Malfoy went lax on the ground, as if he was giving up.

“Because it’s a curse?”

Those raw red rimmed eyes squinted open at him, bitter and suspicious. “Yes.”

“Do you know the counter spell?”

“No,” he closed his eyes again, “only one person knew it.”

Ron made a frustrated noise as the wounds opened again, grabbing his third vial, he had somehow managed to keep the git from bleeding to death. “Well if you’re just giving up then, at least tell me how to get back.”

“Back?” Malfoy rasped, grunting as Ron used the torn shirt to mop off the blood and expose yet another freshly opened slice. “You go back in five minutes.”

“Not in my experience.”

That got him another suspicious squint. “How many times?” He demanded, and Ron must have given him an obviously confused look because he clarified, “How many times have you jumped?”

“This is my third

 “Did you use the car?”

“Yeees?” Ron drew out, uncertain. “You told me to?” That got a reaction, a panicked one.

“Take it off.”

“What?”

“Take it off.” Draco made an aborted motion with his hand, as if he was going to remove it for him, but lacked the strength. “You’re going to cross yourself.”

“I’m what?”

“I’m dying Weasel,” Draco spat, and a bit of blood bubbled to his lips to punctuate that, “if you spoke with me you are running out of time, take it off.”

Ron did, and felt.. felt sturdier. He hadn’t even realized he had felt so off, or perhaps he had just disregarded it as part of his breakdown earlier, but with the time turner no longer around his neck it was like everything came into focus.

“You never want to catch up with yourself.” Draco told him seriously, and reached for the dittany in his hand, “Especially not with the car.” Ron watched, disturbed, as Malfoy drank what was left in the vial. “Did you have any more?”

“More?”

“Dittany Weasel.”

“Oh, yes.” Ron dumped his bag out, bandages and wraps and vials of potions scattering on the floor. Draco groaned as he turned on his side and raised himself on an elbow, snatching up the closest vial and reading the label before uncorking it and drinking that. “I… didn’t know you could do that.”

“Of course you didn’t.” Malfoy mocked, then closed his eyes and breathed. “For serious injuries you really should put it directly on the wound, as you were doing, however this is not a normal injury.” Draco ran a hand from his chin to his navel, where the lines were… still weeping blood but they looked more like cat scratches now, very large cat scratches. “It shouldn’t exist.”

“Why?” Ron passed over a roll of gauze as Draco wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, leaving smears of blood.

“Because I made sure it wasn’t.” Draco laughed, low and mocking, but not at Ron. He stared down at the bloody gauze in his hand, smile thin and brittle as a broken windshield. “Then I crossed myself, and it came back.”

“Crossed…” Ron stared at the slashes, the ones that ‘shouldn’t exists’ and felt the prickle of a memory, of lines in the journal that spoke of ‘scars’ and their ‘absence’, it had sounded poetic at the time, and he returned to them several times. _‘Every time I look in the mirror,”_ it had read, _“I remember it is possible. That I can change things, because they are gone. I have seen the scars, though they are no longer there, and they are the map that leads me forwards.’_ “Your journal said you had scars.”

“From a duel.” Malfoy agreed, and his voice was still so raspy but there was less strain in them. “In sixth year.”

“A…” and he remembered, of course he remembered, “In the bathroom, with Harry. How did I-”

“Forget?” Draco smiled, a mean little thing. “Because it never happened, because I went back, and I stopped it.”

The tests, the little changes Malfoy was making, testing his time travel, seeing what he could easily change and come back to check.

“But I was careless, I keep track of all my jumps, I made sure I knew where I was at all times, but after Nott…” Draco shook his head. “He found out my plans. He was okay with changing a few things, things to benefit us, ways to save face or better our prospects, but starting over? Changing everything? That was too much.” His mean little smile went nasty, “So I obliviated him. Should have known though,” he lay back down, resting his hands on his stomach, “that he would keep the prototype.”

“Change everything?” This was too much, far too much. “In five minute jumps?”

“Don’t be an idiot Weasley,” Draco huffed a laugh, “it’s been far longer than five minutes already.”

Ron blinked, and then gaped, and then made a high frustrated sound in the back of his throat. “What?”

“You used the car,” Draco waved a hand in that direction, “The car doesn’t send you back like a time turner, it sends you BACK, all of your memories, your experiences, your…” Draco glanced meaningfully at the prototype time turner, “specifically charmed items. They all go back to a previous you.”

“But it’s been… I should be..?”

“Crossing yourself,” Malfoy supplied, and that answered the question of what that term meant, “You would have, if you still had the prototype on, but once you took it off time caught up with you, instead of the other way around.” He circled a finger in the air, “This is your time now, congratulations, welcome to the present.”

Ron opened his mouth to reply, closed it, opened it again, then repeated his whine. “I can’t go back?”

“You can’t mean to say you were so very far into the future?” Draco brushed off his distress with a casual sniff.

“I apparated from my office here Malfoy,” Ron ran a bloody hand through his hair, then grimaced when he noticed and began rubbing at his hand with the spare gauze. “How am I going to explain finding you in your own blood when I bring you to St Mugo’s?”

“You won’t.” Malfoy said plainly, and cut off any argument after, “I’m not going to St. Mugos.”

“You lost a lot of blood, and those cuts are not completely healed, you need-“

“They won’t heal.” Draco seemed to be losing strength, or maybe just his will to keep talking. “The dittany bought some time, but they will come back. They’re in a time loop Weasley, there’s no saving me from this.”

**“What?!”**

“You sound like tire brakes,” Malfoy scowled at him, “bad ones. Kindly stop doing so in my ear.” Then he sighed and stared back up at the ceiling. “I told you, I was careless, I kept meticulous track of every jump I made, and only jumped to times where I knew my own location. Except, apparently, one, because I had already changed it.” He lifted his hand, flexed his fingers in front of his face, staring at his own blood, or perhaps the lines in his palm. “I locked Myrtle’s bathroom that night, so that Potter wouldn’t catch me in a… delicate moment, and altered my own locations for the following days, as I was no longer hospitalized. Running into myself… Time Travel is not a well developed field, because any changes we make would alter the future, making the need to make such changes unnecessary. Even now your memories of your future-past will be trickling away, until all you have is a vague recollection of some strange feeling, an urgency, to act in the manner you did. The consequences of missteps are… not often recorded.”

“So you don’t really know why you’re cut to ribbons?”

“No Weasley, I do not, except that it is an injury I had avoided by way of jump.”

“Then how did you… how do you remember?” Ron indicated the room, and then to the desk, where the journal lay. “Is that why you keep the diary?”

“Partly.” Draco admitted. “That’s mostly to organize my experiences, to plan. I keep my memories intact by using a pensieve.” Draco pointed at the doorway leading into the loo, “In the cabinet there, I keep a set of-“ he grunted, face twitching, and before Ron’s eyes the cut on his jaw welled with blood. “Listen.” Draco gripped Ron’s shoulder, the way he had that first time when he had refused care. “There are pills. Silver Gel capsules. They are my memories Weasley, Nott’s too but you don’t need his.” The cut along his chest began to split, and he screwed his eyes shut at the pain. “Take them, all of mine, and then take the car. The gear shift, it is hollow, the time turner is in there.”

“The, but this is-” Ron reached for the one beside them and Draco knocked it away.

“Useless,” Draco hissed, “A prototype, Nott was to destroy it,” he said with an anger unfitting someone who had double crossed his partner himself. “Do you remember the note copying spell your brother’s made?” Ron nodded, “Take the 7 pills, not at once, in the blue jar, they are my other journals. You’ll need them. When you remove your time turner your memories will begin to unravel, you’ll need them.”

“For what?” Ron demanded, “Why do you want me to swallow your memories?”

“Not you,” Draco scoffed, “You just take the journals, find something else to give my memories to, and not me either. I’ll be no help to you even with them.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re going back Weasley,” Draco informed him, and smiled, “or did you think you wouldn’t jump again?” He scoffed at the clueless face but it became a bubbling wet coughing fit halfway through and Ron was too stunned by watching Draco die, again, and the dawning knowledge of what the madman planned, to react. “Don’t tell me there isn’t something you want to change,” Malfoy mocked him, tempted him, “someone you want to save? Some hole in your life you want to refill?”

_‘I simply cannot endure seeing only the one of them,_ ’ the journal had read.

“Don’t you use my brother against me,” Ron’s voice went cold, went hard.

“I’m a Slytherin, I’ll use what leverage I have.” Draco closed his eyes, and neither he nor Ron really bothered with the blood that grew on the floor around him. “Do you remember the summer before first year?” he asked, and his voice was soft now, almost dreamy. “It really felt like anything was possible then, if only I hadn’t made such a mess of it.”

Ron stared at him, not really knowing how to respond.

“Go on then Weasel,” Draco dismissed him. “Go save the world. Since I obviously can’t anymore.”

“I’m not going to fix your life for you.” Ron told him, though it probably wasn’t something someone should say to a dying person. Draco cracked one bloodshot eye at him and managed to grin.

“So don’t.”

And then he died.

Again.


End file.
